Almost 10% of Americans identify as LGBTQ+, largely bisexual
Almost 10% of Americans identify as something other than heterosexual, according to more than 14,000 interviews conducted by Gallup over the course of 2024.
"The number has been increasing over time," said Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones. "When we first asked about it in 2012 it was in the 3% range."
Newly released figures for 2024 show it's now 9.3%. The rise is largely driven by younger adults increasingly identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, with the higher numbers of people calling themselves bisexual.
"I don't think there's a single answer for why," said Jody Herman, a senior scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles Williams Institute, which conducts independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.
"It's probably a variety of things. Obviously social acceptance has changed over time, as well as awareness and education on LGBTQ identity and existence, which might decrease social taboos keeping older generations from disclosing."
The Gallup numbers are consistent with international surveys in wealthy nations.
Ipsos Global polls for 2024 found that in 26 countries, on average 9% of people identified as something other than heterosexual. The high was in the Netherlands, at 14%. The United States was 10%, and the low of 4% was in more socially conservative countries such as Hungary, Japan, Peru, South Africa and South Korea.
Bisexuality on the rise
Overall, and especially among younger people, being bisexual is much more acceptable and safe than it once was, said Robyn Ochs, a writer and frequent speaker on sexuality on college campuses.
"It's a whole different way of being," she said. The definition of bisexual that's more common now is acknowledging the potential in oneself to be attracted to people of more than one gender, but not necessarily at the same time or to the same degree, she said.
There has also been a shift in what that type of identity means, especially among young people.
"They're using identity words more as adjectives, as descriptions of their experience, rather than as nouns," she said. "In the past you had to pick what you were and then find the 'rule book' – the expectations of how you'd look and act – and embody that. If you're a lesbian, then you cut your hair."
Although what it means is generally the same, how people name this type of attractional fluidity varies depending on their age and social group. Some call it pansexual and some queer, and some use multiple other terms.
"The definition is more expansive now and people feel they have the right to claim these terms, in contrast to previous generations," Ochs said. "I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to who are boomers or in the Silent Generation who have said 'I wonder if I were young now, if I would have come to a different identity?"
Young people most likely to identify as LGBTQ+
The highest number of adults to identify as LGBTQ+ are those born between 1997 and 2006. Known as Generation Z, a full 23.1% of them – more than 1 in 5 – call themselves something other than straight.
Each successive older generation has lower rates, with 14.2% of millennials, 5.1% of Generation X, 3.0% of baby boomers and 1.8% of the Silent Generation.
One reason the number is so high for those ages 18 to 27 is they're much more likely to consider themselves bisexual than are older people. More than half of Gen Z (59%) and millennials (52%) who say they're LGBTQ+ identify as bisexual rather than gay or lesbian.
Older LGBTQ+ people are much more likely to identify as gay or lesbian.
These figures are consistent globally. Ipsos polling for 2024 across 26 countries found that 17% of Gen Zers identified as some flavor of non-heterosexual. In comparison, the numbers were 11% for millennials, 6% for Gen Xers and 5% for baby boomers.
Why are so many more people calling themselves LGBTQ+?
Though no one can say for certain why so many Americans, especially younger Americans, now consider themselves something other than heterosexual, experts suggest several trends are in play.
One is that cultural norms for what is acceptable have changed significantly in the past decades.
"Older people who might have been LGBTQ+ didn't want to identify that way, whereas for the younger it's a lot more acceptable. For them to disclose that identity is just not a big deal," Gallup's Jones said.
There's also more information via the internet and many more role models in the media, said Ochs, who is also editor of Bi Women Quarterly.
"It's also safer than it was in the past," she said.
It's also true that as people enter into long-term relationships, they can come to use the term for that type of relationship.
So if a woman is married to a man, she eventually might call herself heterosexual even though she might continue to find women attractive.
And if she's married to a woman she might end up calling herself a lesbian, even though she still finds men attractive.
"For a lot of people, you end up in a long-term monogamous relationship and that's the identity you claim," Ochs said.
Whether younger generations will continue to identify as something other than heterosexual as they grow older isn't known.
Who identifies as LGBTQ+?
People who said they were Democrats or independents were far more likely to say they were LGBTQ+ than people who said they were Republicans. Broken down by political leanings, 14% of Democrats and 11% of independents identify as LGBTQ+ compared with 3% of Republicans.
Whether someone went to college didn't seem to have much effect. Ten percent of people who hadn't graduated from college identified as LGBTQ+, and 9% of college graduates did.
LGBTQ+ identification is highest among people living in cities, at 11%, compared with 10% in suburbs and 7% in rural areas.
Women were much more likely to say they were something other than straight, mostly because they were more likely than men to say they were bisexual.
Ten percent of women said they were something other than straight, while only 6% of men did. That was mostly because women were more likely to say they were bisexual than men.
The numbers were especially pronounced in the younger generations. Among Gen Zers, 31% of women versus 12% of men called themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans. Among millennials, 18% of women versus 9% of men identified that way, with most of these younger women saying they are bisexual.
"This is also consistent with other findings," UCLA's Herman said.
It's probably a combination of things, she suggested, including different notions relating to masculinity and femininity in our culture.
"There could also be a legitimate gender difference in identity," she said. "It's a nature-versus-nurture puzzle that no one's going to solve."
One percent to 2% of U.S. adults identified their gender as nonbinary, which would include transgender. Of that group, about 8 out of 10 also identified as LGBTQ+.
How were the Gallup numbers determined?
The numbers Gallup released come from all the telephone surveys it did over the course of 2024. At the end of each survey the Gallup pollster asked demographic questions including age, income, race and sexuality.
Last year, 14,162 American adults were randomly sampled. Gallup first began measuring sexuality as part of demographics in 2012. The poll's margin of error is 1%, meaning differences of 1% in either direction could have happened by chance.
The question on sexuality is sensitive, and about 7% of people typically decline to answer it. "For most questions we ask, it's 1 or 2% that don't give an answer," Jones said.